1st Quarter 2022 - Books, Movies, Goals

I have plenty of things to catch up on, but let’s start with the easiest to write. Namely, the quarterly updates.

Books:

1. Nancy and Benedict Freedman, Mrs. Mike. I’d read this book in my early teens, but had forgotten much of it. The story involves a teenager who is sent to western Canada because she has pleurisy and the cold dry air was thought to be good for her lungs. She meets and marries a Mountie and they go to live in northern Alberta. There’s plenty of action and trauma (e.g. one scene I had remembered involved a mother having to amputate her son’s leg after he got it caught in a bear trap) so it mostly makes for a good read. Some of the language dealing with the local villages is rather dated, which might be an issue for some readers. But I enjoyed this for the most part.
   
   
2. Paul Breines, Tough Jews. I had bought this book without reading the jacket blurb. I was expecting something about Jewish criminals - a subject I am interested in. Instead, it is focused on Jews in literature. And, specifically, those who fight back instead of quietly studying while allowing non-Jews to slaughter them. Basically, I hated the whole premise. Essentially, Breines has written an anti-Zionist screed, objecting to Jews being anything but scholars and merchants at the mercy of the rest of the world. Maybe he should read some history (or, at least, a newspaper) instead of suspense novels.
   
   
3. Tama French, The Searcher. This was for book club. The story involves a Chicago cop who has moved to a small village in Ireland. One day, a child shows up and asks him to look for an older brother who has disappeared. This leads to his investigating the disappearance and finding dark secrets in the village. The most interesting part of the story is not the crime aspect, but the relationship that develops between the policeman and the child. Overall, this was interesting, but a lot more violent than I’d have preferred.
   
   
4. Jaroslav Hasek, The Good Soldier Schwek Joseph Schwek is a rather hapless man who gets caught up in the Austro-Hungarian army during World War I. One source of his constant confusion is the multiethnic nature of the army. But the deeper question is whether he is a troublemaker or just an idiot. Mildly amusing, but not really my sort of book.
   
   
5. Christopher Buckley, Florence of Arabia. I’ve read several of Buckley’s books and they are very funny. This one was no exception. The plot involves a woman working for the State Department who tries to bring peace to the Mideast by empowering women in the fictional nation of Wasabia after a princess she had befriended was executed. She sets up a television station in neighboring Matar. She also has to deal with the machinations of the French and the eccentricities of her own team. This was a quick and highly entertaining read.
   
   
6. Elizabeth Scarborough, The Unicorn Creed. Unicorns speak in limericks? Who knew? This is mostly standard sword and sorcery, though at least the main female character is a rather domestic sort of witch rather than a fighter with a chainmail bra. There’s nothing particularly brilliant here, but it is a pleasant enough distraction.
   
   
7. Elizabeth George. The Mysterious Disappearance of the Reluctant Book Fairy. Mysterious Press has published a series of short mysteries with literary themes. This one involves a woman who can not only physically enter books, but can help other people to do so. This eventually leads to a very successful business. But there are consequences, so she seeks her own ultimate escape. I found this very entertaining and the length (85 pages) was perfect for the story. I will admit, however, that I did not get every single literary reference.
   
   
   
8. Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis. This is the autobiography, in the form of a graphic novel, of an Iranian woman who grew up during the revolution. Her family sends her to a French high school in Vienna and she struggles to fit in, leading to a particularly troubled adolescence. She returns to Iran, studies art, marries, and eventually ends up finding her own way in life. I found this thoroughly absorbing and thought that I learned a lot about Persian culture and history from it. Highly recommended.
   
   
9. Laura Lippman, The Book Thing. This is another of those slim volumes from Mysterious Press - only 42 pages. I’ve long admired Lippman’s work for how well it captures Baltimore and this is no exception. It also helps that The Book Thing, one of my favorite places in Baltimore, plays a major role in it, as the title suggests. Simply delightful.
   
   
10. James Thurber, My Life and Hard Times. I’ve read this at least a couple of times before. It includes some of Thurber’s best pieces, including “The Day the Dam Broke” and “The Car We Had to Push.” The latter has a particularly hilarious section about an uncle who died of the chestnut blight. If you’ve never read Thurber, this is the perfect starting point. And if you have read his work, this is a great way to sit down and visit with him and his eccentric family.
    
    
    
11. Dave Ramsey, The Total Money Makeover. I got this in a book exchange I did. Frankly, I am not the target audience for it, since I have no debt and plenty of savings. If you don’t understand living within your means, maybe this is of some use. I also think his take on investments is out of date, given current low interest rates. (I’d say just stick most of your money in a broad based index fund.) Blah.
    
    
12. Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half. This was a book club selection and was reasonably interesting. The story involves twin sisters, who grow up in a small African-American town where being light-skinned is highly valued. They leave as teenagers. One sister goes on to pass for white, while the other marries a very dark-skinned man and has a dark-skinned daughter, before returning to their home town. The daughters of the two twins end up meeting, leading to a lot of tension about what stories will come out. To further complicate things, the re is a trans man who the dark daughter gets involved with. It’s an interesting book, but there are a lot more questions in it than answers, so I didn’t find it completely satisfying. (Which also seemed to be pretty much the consensus of my book club.)
    
    
13. Paula J. Vester, At the Humming of the Wheel. This is a collection of folktales that are related to fiber arts / textiles in some way. They are mostly familiar ones, e.g. “Rumplestiltskin,” and “The Twelve Swans.” I was hoping for something less familiar (and, frankly, less European.) Not entirely useless, but disappointing,
    
    
14. Dick Francis, Blood Sport. If you just want to relax with a nice suspenseful (albeit violent) novel, you can’t really go wrong with Dick Francis. In this book, a depressed government agent is on vacation when his boss asks him to help a friend recover a stolen horse. He figures out the horse theft pretty quickly - and continues to solve a related earlier mystery. I’ll admit to being disturbed that our hero flies between the U.K.. and U.S. with a loaded pistol, which I don’t think was possible even in the 1960’s. But, frankly, who cares, when a book is this fast-paced an entertaining.
    
    
    
15. William Dalrymple, In Xanadu. This is exactly the sort of book I love. Dalrymple set out to retrace the route of Marco Polo from Jerusalem to Xanadu, crossing Syria, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, and China along the way. There are legal and physical hardships along the way, but he tells interesting stories (e.g. tracing the story o the three magi to a Zoroastrian legend). He’s also very funny and highly quotable, so I ended up reading various excerpts to my crafts group. I finished this wanting to find everything else he’s written and devour it. Highly recommended.
    
    
16. Dr. Walter Robert Corti, The Sun. My parents had a series of thin illustrated books that were published by The Odyssey Press in the 1960’s. They’re quick reads, due to their length and illustrations. This is, of course, rather dated, but some of the illustrations (e.g. a series re: total solar eclipses) are still helpful.
    
    

Movies:

1. Cyrano: I saw this in a movie theatre with a friend. For those unfamiliar with the current adaptation, it stars Peter Dinklage, so the gimmick is not about the nose. Which comes out one of my favorite speeches from the play, but does provide an interesting twist. It is also a musical. Alas, I thought the music was uninteresting and didn’t, in general, do much to reveal character or advance the story. Overall, I thought the movie was just okay, which amounted to it being disappointing. (The friend I saw it with liked it quite a bit, however.)
   
   
2. The Quest For Sleep: I watched this documentary about insomnia on YouTube. There was a talk back afterwards with some of the sleep experts and a couple of the patients who were involved in it. It was moderately interesting, but I didn’t think it had much new to say. At least it didn’t put me to sleep.
   
   
   

Goals:

Let’s see how I’ve done on my goals for the year.

• I’ve taken 3 trips (one to New York, one to Boston, one to Connecticut and New York) out of 10. And I have solid plans for 2 more and fuzzy plans for 3 more.
  
  
• I’m almost 2/3 done with a cross stitch project.
  
  
• I’ve made a dent in the stacks of magazines.
  
  
• I’ve learned and told one new folktale. I have a good start on a new personal story.
  
  
• I’ve read 16 books, so am not quite on pace to finish 75 by the end of the year, but am close.
  
  

I have not, however, done any work on afghans. Nor have I done any organizing of either photographs or my yarn stash. Nor have I done anything about language study, largely because I cannot quite decide what language(s) I want to study.

Note my complete lack of goals relating to keeping up on writing here.